101 English

Remember the night you posted a degrading status about your boss because of a bad day at work? The specifics may seem vague to you, but with new technology, everyone including your job employer can now see how un-responsible you were the night that you posted that status. This happened just because of a single misleading post on Facebook. This woman, for example, recently started working for a company and did not know she had added her boss on Facebook prior to the post. (Mark) (Applicant.com/how-to-lose-a-job-via-Facebook)

She used Facebook to harass her boss without realizing the consequences for posting things that cause offense to others. This happened to her by a chance, but with most major companies now using face recognition technology, advanced data base searches, and background checks as a basic pre-screening requirement, the chances of getting fired for being irresponsible on the Internet are higher now than ever before.

Since the rise of social media websites, most major companies now do background checks on all of their current and new employees on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. This is done to eliminate everyone who misuses the Internet and breaks company policies, such as: promoting illegal drugs, wild drinking, or even judging ones sexuality, such as the woman who degraded her boss over Facebook. In these background checks, they make sure every employee, who is active online, keeps themselves well represented and professional at all times. These checks are not only required once the person is hired, but they are also repeated to make sure each employee is responsible online. In Nick Carr’s, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” he states how people use the Internet as a universal medium for information, and relies on it as a main source of knowledge as well. People have a choice on what sources they use, and, as technology advances more and more, people are using the Internet more than ever before. This actually contributes to the negative affects of having a job and a Facebook at the same time, because, as more people use the Internet, it is more likely there will be negative things online, which can be seen by their company. As he later describes, people use the Internet so much that it shapes their thought process for everything Internet related in their lives. Not only does this lead people to make stupid decisions, such as posting things that are not necessary on the Internet, but also can cause them to lose their jobs by doing so. Many times the power social media sites is taken for granted by people who misuse it. With background checks increasing as more people use the Internet, employees need to re-evaluate how they use their social media sites, as misuse can lead to having no job in the future.

Many companies are now also catching their employees doing wrongful things on the Internet with face recognition technology. This new feature allows companies who are hiring new employees to check their Facebook or Twitter and detect if they are hiding anything that the company should know about. Face recognition matches up the facial features of each individual person and locates them on social media sites without the need to even type in any name. This is very useful because many people are now trying to outsmart their companies by changing their names online, or even making fake accounts to become temporarily undetectable. With the simple click of a button, companies can find the true identity behind any fake accounts made by their employees, or anything associated with their picture beside it. By adding this to the pre-screening requirement many companies are catching people cheating and lying to them, and they can weed out the people they see as unfit for the job. With social media sites being used more frequently around the world, companies are becoming stricter as to whom they hire for jobs and can detect the misfits by using face recognition technology.

When job employers look for someone to hire, they not only look at the individual themselves, but everyone involved in that persons life, such as their family, friends, or even past co-workers. This method is done with advanced data base searches that are only used to check on everything related to that person. It is almost like a Google of the job employer world, as one can say. All they have do is type in your name, and everything is accessible from, your childhood elementary school, to your personal cell phone number, even as vague as who your friends with on Facebook. The main reason is to justify the person’s honesty for a company and to double check that all of the information given to them is actually correct. In James Bowman’s article “Is Stupid Making Us Google,” he states that the mentors have betrayed their pupils and have not taught them how to properly use the Internet. This is moderately true because most people who are getting out of college and applying for jobs do not know of the dangers of being on a social media site with degrading status’s and pictures on it. In today’s world, having a bad reputation online is one of the first things job employers look at next to education. Almost every time someone is looking to apply for a new job, they are accepting the fact that their entire life is being looked at online, no matter what they put on paper. Many times, it is better to stay away from the Internet as a whole than trying to hide something from someone who can potentially be paying your salary. I, personally, also feel myself trying to avoid the Internet as much as possible now, because the risk of not having a job over one post or picture just does not seem worth it to me.

As companies are slowly using technology to benefit themselves, the same is not always said for the employees they hire. As for the woman who used the power of the Internet to shame her boss, or anyone who tries to hide, steal, or show themselves as someone they are not on the Internet, the potential outcome is surely not worth the risk. With advanced database searches, face recognition technology, and background checks, the chances of your company finding you doing something wrong over the Internet is slowly turning from a misconception, into a dreading reality for many.

Ever wonder what it is like to be inside of a teenage girls head? Directed by Mark Waters the movie Mean Girls staring Lindsay Lohan, Tina Fey, and Rachel McAdams, helps us relieve what its like to be in high school just one more time. This movie helps us see life through a teenage girl’s eyes filled with drama and backstabbing friends. The writer Tina Fey keeps the film going along with great humor to mix in with the massive amounts of drama. Throughout this movie, the symbolism is showed through a “burn book” which represents all the wrongs of high school society and how Cady is separated from the rest of her high school.

Cady Heron is the new girl in town who moves to the suburbs of Chicago because of her father’s job relocation. On the first day, she meets her new friends Janis, who is an outcast, and Damian who is “too gay to function.” These two explain to her what it is like to be a typical teenager in high school. Although they expect her to blend right in and be normal, Cady does not have the same views. She on the other hand, sees things from the outside in because of such a tremendous change of scenery in such a short amount of time. The fact that she is able to change from living in the jungle one day to associating and interacting with teenagers the next, in such a short amount of time is fascinating. The only problem with Cady moving in too quickly is her ability to see things too realistically. This shows that as she is adjusting; she sees things from an animalistic point of view such as in the lunchroom where all of her classmates are portrayed as animals feeding from a watering hole or when she is fighting Regina George (Rachel McAdams) in her head because of a boy, and describes as to how it would be dealt in the “animal world”. This expresses the difference in Cady compared to the other students throughout this film because most other people do not see these situations like her. Although she does not see things as most people, there are a few who try to change her.

These girls are known as the Plastics. Until her first meeting with them, Cady was an innocent girl who respected her parents, kept her schoolwork in line, and most of all her social life as her last priority. While encountering Regina George, Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Charbert), and Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried) at lunch one day, she slowly starts to change as a person. Over the course of a few weeks, Cady Heron, the nobody of the school, who only had two friends, became the most popular girl in the entire school, second to Regina George the “queen bee.” The plastics changed Cady’s entire image, from the clothes she wore, to the people she was spending her time with. The most drastic change was her involvement with the drama of the school. This drama of “The Plastics” being involved in everyone’s business really opened up Cady and changed her. These changes are noticed by Cady’s parents, her real friends, teachers, and even the plastics, who love her for who the new Cady. This all occurred when her animalistic and “outside in” mindset changed and became somewhat known as the typical American teenager mindset. This change showed us what it was really like for someone who is an outsider to turn into a standard American teen. The mean and cruel ways of these girls led them to create the burn book. I personally felt outraged by the Plastics because of their abilities to change someone who had no right being with them in the first place. It kind of reminds me of the times where the wrong people influenced the good kids in the school and seeing those good kids change was a terrible thing.

The burn book is something “The Plastics” use in order to talk trash about other girls in the school who are not as good as they are. This book is kept a secret until conflicts start to occur within the group causing the release of the book. Not only does this end up in an all out war of teenage drama throughout the school, but it shows us what reality teenagers have to face on a daily basis in high school. This book symbolizes the pressure teenagers face to be better than one another and the risks they will take to do so. This wrong act by the girls, lead for themselves to be shamed upon by the entire school. All of the reputations created, social classes, and authority created were gone in an instant. This is something I frown upon myself because no high school should have to have one group better than another one no matter the circumstances. The book ended up show the true nature of the four girls, and how they will do anything to be better than the rest of the school.

In this film there are a great amount of camera affects and editing that can be seen in this film. One scene where the camera comes into importance is when Cady, and the Plastics are walking to a sass song by Missy Elliot. This scene has the camera starts off at a normal view and as the Plastics (including Cady) are walking down the hall the camera goes to an extreme low angle, almost at the ground. As Cady looks away for a split second the camera zooms in, to catch her falling right into the garbage can! While the camera returns to normal view, the viewers can see the affects done by the camera as it makes a funny scene even funnier.

Throughout this film, Cady tries to change to impress the Plastics and show everyone she can blend into being a normal person. The director, Mark Waters, does a good job showing the problems that Cady faces while adding what drama and changing to a negative image can do to someone. This film depicts everyday life for teenagers and the burn book shows us the wrongful things that are done in high school by teens. I personally enjoyed this movie because of its reliability of what a true high school is actually like, but do not agree with how the issue was solved. This issue if faced in real high schools was never solved as an entire school, most times nothing being done if the problem was too big. In my eyes, this film depicted what it is like for a newcomer to experience and assimilate to high school life in America.

As the semester is winding down, I finally start to feel as if my writing is catching up with me. In my two essays that were used for my final portfolio, I really get a sense of what its like to read and re read something over until it does not even look like English anymore. Although I cannot say my work is perfect or will ever be anything relatively close, I can say my best effort to change and re-work these essays together was put in. It’s almost like taking a car apart and putting it back together piece by piece while understanding how to assemble it while its being done. In this semester, I can honestly say I have learned more about English than in all my years of schooling combined.

My first essay, Facebook Increases Job Unemployment, I basically stripped my entire first final copy down, which I called my “zero final” and took it to the work shop. I took mostly just the conclusion and a few ideas and sentences from bits and pieces to start off fresh with my new essay. Here I was a tad bit stuck because I had never written a final essay “fresh” without anyone’s help prior. I slowly learned what needed to be done. With my intro having mostly just a sentence or two from my conclusion I started off fresh taking the fourth paragraph example and moving it to the first and take the ideas merely talked about in paragraph two and making it a thesis idea for the latter half of the essay. With my main topics, face recognition technology, background checks and advanced data base searches as my three main ideas I set off in writing my essay. I found my hardest challenge to be trying to assimilate the ideas of the two authors from the modules into my essay. This was difficult because I was talking about social media technology and Facebook, while the authors were talking about Google and how readers are distracted by ads, and have a lack of concentration for the information that is presented to them. This connection was hopefully made because I spent a great ordeal of time reading the articles trying to find any link possible to connect the two together. Although this was a challenge I kept my mind at it and completed the essay.

While looking for a second essay to choose to fix, I looked at what would make the most sense for me to write about. In this choice I looked for something that I could show some emotion into because I was lacking that in my own papers and life. This led me to choose the Mean Girls Review in which I discussed a completely different side of the movie while watching the movie a 10th time in about a week. This movie was stripped down in my eyes to the most basic fundamentals and ideas that I never thought I could see before. Here I basically started fresh trying to follow the same format as the previous essay, taking ideas here and there. In this essay I looked for flow and emotion to lead me through the end. I enjoyed this essay the most because it showed me the true meaning of Mean Girls. My new essay was basically new except for the camera angles section, which I found no need to change because those were more of facts than opinions. This essay showed me how difficult reviewers have it trying to convey how they feel while trying not give too much away.

This assignment has taught me a lot about writing as a whole. The main idea is that practice, practice and more practice is the key to becoming a successful writer. I personally feel that experiencing this type of writing will give me a different outlook on how I will proofread and work on my final essays upcoming next semester.

On this long train ride home, which is about 8 hours long I start to wonder if going home is really as exciting as it was before I left my dorm room. The craze to be home is slowly fading because after about a day or so, and my only thought becomes when am I returning to school. School somehow seems like a better place to be in with more independence and freedom than if one was at home. Listening to my mother and fathers “wise words” and commands are going to be hard considering none of us have done it for a few months. Although it seems like it is going to be a good time to sit down and enjoy quality time with my family, I am quite unsure of how long the excitement will actually last for. Tonight should determine all of the questions I have for the last few months.

As everyone on campus knows, today the curfew for leaving was 9 a.m. To me, this didn’t seem like much of a problem until I realized that my train does not leave until one. Hoping that my room would buy me an hour or two until I can leave for the station I did not even make it 30 minutes before I found myself outside on the campus for “trespassing” school property. To me, this is ridiculous because of the fact that it was just for an hour or two, not the entire break! Some of the rules created here make no sense and the fact that they do not follow up on the important ones such as no smoking on campus but follow up on leaving dorms on time is a little out of proportion. On the contrary, it is Thanksgiving break and school is far behind! Have a good break everybody.

Here at Buffalo there are many things to do on the weekend besides partying and going out. For the first time I found myself watching a movie with friends and just hanging out in the dorms. It may not be the most fun, but it is good for a change to meet new people and experience new things. On the weekend there are activities such as watching movies, joining a club, playing sports outside, going to the gym, or even meeting new people in your hall. These activities are very low stress, while still having fun. I enjoy low stress activities like these because it allows for relaxation and enjoying the things that do not involve partying and going out. This weekend taught me that it is not always necessary to go out to have fun.

As this semester is coming to an end, I am sure all of us are excited to go home and be with our families. The best part about being this far in the semester is seeing how I have progressed as a student. There have been days where I wonder if this is the right school for me, but as I look back I think the choice was right to attend Buffalo. The biggest difference for me is the people here. Everyone here seems to make the University worth the stay because of the qualities they possess. These qualities that others possess make me want to become a better person myself. As a person I can see the change in myself from the irresponsible person who could not even wake up in time for high school, to someone who looks forward to class in college. This semester and the people I met have taught me how to become a more responsible student while still having a good time.